Salt

 Never underestimate the need for salt. 

 

 I was doing a routine check on the mares yesterday and Patsy came up to greet me. 

I was rather alarmed to see her like that. She had been standing in the shade of the mares shelter with the other horses so I sure wasn't expecting anything amiss. 

It wasn't overly hot and humid, pretty much the same as it has been for several days. 

I consulted with Shayla and with the vet. There were no signs of distress other than the rapid breathing; she was eating and drinking normally, so we ruled out colic  but gave her a dose of banamine anyway. 

Vet said I could bring her in in the morning if needed,  but by the cool of the evening she was pretty much  back to normal.  I figure she was like that for at least 5 hours. I was pretty worried about her. 

What I think happened is that the mares were not letting her at the salt tub, which was in the middle back of the shelter, and without enough salt she couldn't sweat enough to cool off. This morning she spent 5 minutes licking salt, and later I brought out a bucket of loose salt and added it it to the tub. 

She had several mouthfuls!

The other mares all helped themselves to it too  

And I moved it to a better spot  where nobody will get trapped and picked on. 

Patsy was normal today, so I think the salt was the issue, leading to anhidrosis. 

In case you were wondering

 I didn't mean to get y'all worried with my prolonged absence here, but things just piled up in a hurry. 

I will do a separate post on Gemma's journey from being an untouchable to being a darn near pocket pony, as it will be a fairly lengthy one.

Suffice to say, I am well pleased with the progress she made. 

Meanwhile, I went from having a cold to having full blown pneumonia and needing hospitalization.

My first ambulance ride since I broke my wrist 20 years ago

 It's amazing how quickly pneumonia can take you down., I will spare you all the details, except that it will be a fairly slow recovery with weekly check ups. So no major projects for me for the next couple of months. I just got released from a 4 day stay, most of which was spent in the emergency ward; I got an actual room at 11:45 pm last night and got released today around 2:30 pm. Oh how welcome it was to breathe fresh air and feel the sun on my face!